


The Days Sure To Come

by PositivelyVexed



Category: True Detective
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Halloween, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-13 15:15:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21153965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PositivelyVexed/pseuds/PositivelyVexed
Summary: In the weeks leading up to the fifth anniversary of the disappearance of the Purcell children, neither Tom nor Roland are doing so well.





	The Days Sure To Come

**Author's Note:**

  * For [M J Holyoke (wholeyolk)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wholeyolk/gifts).

“Aw, Jesus,” Detective West said, lifting his head from the pillow. “You didn’t have to do that.”

Tom set the tray down beside him on the nightstand, pushing aside the dusting of Kleenex piled up on the nightstand. “Maybe I wanted to. You’ve been there for me enough times.”

Detective West tried to sit, his fatigue painfully evident in the way he struggled to get his arms under him. The congested, groggy way he said, “Yeah, but I wasn’t risking the plague when I did that.”

Tom shrugged. He wasn’t worried about that. “Try to eat something when you feel ready. See if it helps.”

Detective West raised his head, squinted at the bowl of soup. "Yeah. All right."

“Lean forward,” Tom said, stacking pillows behind his back so he could sit up. When he was comfortable, Detective West looked blearily around Tom’s bedroom before focusing on the tray Tom sat in front of him.

“Haven’t had someone make me soup in a long time,” he said, wrapping his hand around the spoon. Tom tried not to dwell on the sight of Detective West in Tom’s bed, chest hair peaking from the collar of his undershirt, hair sticking up in back.

“You don’t have to watch me eat,” Detective West said, glancing at Tom. Tom shrugged. Detective West had stared at him plenty of times when their positions were reversed.

He seemed to take the point and shrugged, lifted the spoon to his mouth. “Always forget I like chicken noodle. Thanks.”

Tom sat cautiously on the side of the bed, watching him, an unfamiliar kind of worry tugging at his chest, still not quite able to believe Detective West was here in his bedroom.

Tom had been standing at the deli counter at the one still-open grocery store in town. He was just getting off an early shift—after two weeks without a day off—and the thought of making food for himself was more than he could bear. He’d been staring blearily at the heating trays full of fried food when he’d heard the bell over the door ring, and Detective West was in there. He raised his hand, and Detective West raised his hand in return, pointed down the pharmaceuticals aisle, making a beeline. Tom was torn for a minute—inclined to stay in line, but there was something haggard in the man’s face that he recognized, and it sent an uneasy jolt of recognition through him. He’d followed Detective West down the aisle, where he was staring between cold and sinus packages, taking them off the shelf and looking at the back.

“Isn’t non-drowsy supposed to be a thing?” Detective West muttered.

“Pretty sure it is. Can’t say I know which is which, though." He paused. "Detective West, you all right?”

“Yeah. Just got a tough case, taking a lot out of me. Burning the candle at both ends and shit.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

Detective West bent over in a coughing fit. “Picked a hell of a time to get sick is all.”

He frowned, stood with his hands in his pockets, staring at Detective West. Feeling something close to responsibility for the man who’d been hauling him out of fistfights for the last however many years—since before he’d left West Finger the first time.

He looked at him, worried. Since he’d been back, he’d known Roland to work hard. Hadn’t even really known the man to have sighed, straightened up. “You know, I’m ordering food here. I could order something for both of us.”

Detective West waved his hand. “Nah. I was just planning to grab something at the Dairy Freeze on the way to my next stop.”

“Dairy Freeze closed down a couple months ago.”

Detective West looked up, squinting at Tom. “Jesus. Is anything still open in this town these days?”

Tom shrugged. “Not much, since the plant closed. This place has been hanging on.”

Detective West sighed, a crease forming between his eyebrows as he looked at the deli counter.

“You could come back to my place to eat, before you head on your way. I make better coffee than this place does, anyway.” Tom was surprised to hear the offer come out of his mouth. “You could see my new place.”

Detective West stared at him for a moment. “Can’t say no to a good cup of coffee.”

\---

“How long’s it been since you slept?” Tom asked back at his place, over a half-eaten lunch of chicken wings and macaroni salad.

Detective West waved off the note of concern in his voice.

“I got some sleep in my car last night. This case just has me running all over four counties collecting statements. Keep feeling like we’re on the verge of breaking through—” he trailed off. Detective West had always been skittish about talking about cases around him, like it would set Tom off, send him down some kind of spiral.

“Don’t look like you slept well,” Tom said.

Detective West pursed his lips together, like he was biting back some kind of smart remark. Maybe about getting advice on treating yourself right from Tom-fucking-Purcell.

“It just ain’t worth the trouble of driving home,” Detective West said.

“You want to take a nap and a shower here before heading out again, you’re welcome to,” Tom said. “Save yourself the trip back into Fayetteville. Statements will still be there for you to take in the morning.”

Roland refused. Thanked him for the lunch. Got as far as getting into his car to drive off. Then he started the engine and staring off into the distance for a couple minutes, doubling over in a coughing fit, before he turned the engine off again.

“Maybe I should lay down for a minute,” he said, returning to the door, where Tom still stood.

\---

Detective West had slept most of the day, and was now sitting up in his bed, bleary-eyed and red-nosed, scraping his spoon around the soup bowl.

“Hell, Tom. Thanks. That hit the spot.”

Tom looked at the floor. “I got a real way with a can opener.” 

“It always tastes better when someone else is working the can opener.”

Tom felt, of all things, a blush creeping over his face. He could have made his own, and had thought of doing it for Detective West this afternoon--slipping off to the store, buying ingredients. Be a proper host; it’d always been one of the only meals he was reasonably confident in his ability to make. That had been years ago though. He hadn’t cooked for another person since the kids, and the kids always wanted Campbell’s Chicken and Stars when they were sick anyway.

He thought of the last time he’d taken care of someone when they were sick, staying home with Julie just a few weeks before…

It always was easier to call off at the auto body shop than at the Saw Horse, or at least that’s what Lucy said. Tom and Julie had sat sat on the couch watching reruns of _Bewitched_ and _I Dream of Jeanie_ all day, Julie’s head pillowed on his lap, blankets bundled up tight around her. It was something he’d never could have imagined any kind of knack for when he was younger, taking care of another person, but having kids changed that about him. Made him happy to do it. Gave him a satisfaction he hadn’t known he was capable of.

He turned back to Detective West, feeling a strange tightness in his chest. It wasn’t the same sort of thing now, not at all, but there was something similar. That surprising spark of satisfaction. He’d thought he’d lost that for good, or at least didn’t deserve to ever feel it again.

Roland stretched, looked at Tom with glassy eyes. “You can kick me out any time you get sick of me.”

“How many times have you looked after me?”

A shrug, like Detective West was conceding the point. “Well, it’s appreciated. Though I don’t want to be responsible for giving you what I got.”

“I ain’t worried about that. I never get colds,” Tom said gruffly. “Not since I was a kid. Nursed those kids through a hundred colds and never caught one from them.”

It looked like Detective West was running back through his memory and thinking over whether he’d ever known anything of him that contradicted that. He must have come up empty, cause he just nodded.

“Well, look at you.”

“Just born lucky, I guess.” There was more of a bitter twist in his voice than he’d meant.

Detective West looked at him, eyes blinking slowly at him, like the effort of keeping his lids propped up was a battle he was losing. “Been a while since I had anyone looking out for me. You don’t have to do it, Tom. But it is appreciated.”

“It’s been a while since I’ve done it,” he muttered, brushing a lock of hair out of his eyes.

Detective West just held that same steady, intent gaze. “I know. You’re good at it.”

He bit his lip tight and he nodded, and though he hadn’t meant to, he sat down on the empty side of the bed beside Detective West, curled up tight in on himself. Roland shifted and rolled so he was facing Tom, watched him carefully.

“Can’t say I’m a good bedmate, but if you want to lay down in your own bed a while, you can.”

Tom nodded, and slowly unfolded himself. Tom drifted like that, uneasily stretched out on the side of the bed he never slept on. His instinct was to go to the couch, but he felt a reluctance to leave that maybe had something to do with keeping an eye on Detective West and making sure he didn’t try to drive off hopped up on cold medicine, and maybe just had to do with the fact that he was desperately tired too.

He sighed, decided he’d sleep for a minute. He pulled off his belt and shrugged off his flannel shirt, and slipped under the covers.

He was briefly startled, a few minutes later by the weight and warmth of Detective West, as he shifted back up again him. He closed his eyes, feeling the weight of him against his side, his bare feet brushing Roland’s. He closed his eyes, vowed to disentangle himself from Detective West in a moment.

When he woke up, the sun had sunk below the trees. He raised his head, surveyed Detective West’s sleeping face. His mouth was slightly open, and he seemed to be sleeping deeply. He got up slowing, trying not to wake him as he went.

“Heading out?” he murmured as Tom rose, pulling his flannel back on, coughing wetly as he shifted.

“Nah. Just heading out to the porch for a smoke,” Tom said. “Get some rest.” He would have lit up inside, but he felt like Detective West was coughing enough without him making it worse.

He ended up sitting outside, under the cover of the back porch’s little balcony, sitting in one of his lawn chairs, ash tray balanced on his knee. He stared out as twilight turned to night and the rain pouring heavily. He tapped his cigarette against the ashtray, thinking about Detective West.

Thought about that limp always stirred some vague guilt in Tom’s chest, like it was really caused by him.

Tom would have taken the blown-apart knee in a second, if it could have brought his kids back, but he had gotten some hints, over the years, of how much that limp held him back on the force. Whenever Tom raised his head beyond the scorched battlements of his life, to see the full scope of the devastation of Will and Julie’s deaths, it seemed like shit had gotten poisoned for everyone connected with the case. Hell, West Finger itself had withered and died in the last five years, which felt right in some selfish way, but also made him ache for what used to be.

He closed his eyes, thought about the way Detective West’s face smoothed and got younger at rest.

It felt like a painfully small, meagre thing. Bringing a sick man a bowl of soup. All the same, he kept replaying it in his head. There was something simple and good in taking care of someone else. He thought unbidden of Detective West in 1980, laying in that bed with his blown-apart knee by himself. He hadn’t come then. He wished he had. But he’d been barely able to hold himself together then, clutching his head in white knuckle desperation to avoid flying apart at the seams.

Detective West, who’d come when he’d called last year. 

_Through the glass wall of the phone booth, he could see headlights cutting through the night, throwing a dull glare across the wet pavement. He lifted his head, squinted at the make, scrambled to his feet. The driver slowed as he approached._

_Detective West got him to his feet, a sad smile on his face. “Hey Tom. Been a while.”_

_He hauled him up out of the phone booth, helped him walk across the rain slicked parking lot to the gas station, forced the bathroom door around back open in a way Tom wasn’t entirely sure was legal. _

_Tom stood still, hands on the sink, while Detective West stood behind him, rinsing out the cut on his forehead, till he could get a look at it and satisfy himself that it wasn’t too deep. After he was done, he took Tom by the shoulders and turned him around, so he got a good look at the bruises blooming across his face._

_“Can’t believe you came,” muttered Tom, around a puffed up lip. “Why’d you go to all this trouble for me?”_

_“Guess I just like you.”_

_“What the fuck is there to like about me?” Tom asked._

_Detective West shrugged. A smile flickered for a second. “Maybe I just like people who don’t know when to quit fighting.”_

_Tom’s eyes pricked open, and he glanced at Detective West. “Well, I won’t disappoint you then.”_

_“No, probably not.” He said it lightly, but his eyes followed Tom, worry etched there._

He tried to banish the memory of Detective West’s hands on him then, the first face he'd seen in years of anyone from his life in Arkansas, gently turning his face right and left, checking for injuries. Brushing the stubble on his chin. The ugly truth was, this wasn’t pure, what he felt. Hadn't been then, it wasn't now. Despite all his prayers he didn’t think it ever would be. He frowned. The wind picked up with a chill in it, so he went inside.

Inside, Detective West was coughing, and he checked in on him. Got him fresh Kleenex and water, made him some tea.

A night of tossing and increasingly raw-throated coughing followed. Tom could hear it all even out on his couch, and it drew him in to check on Detective West a few times.

When he woke up in the morning, Detective West was already in the shower, and he came out of the bathroom fully dressed to find Tom in the kitchen.

“Coffee?”

“I need it today.”

Tom watched him warily. “So what happened? On this case?”

A shrug. “Murder. Twenty-five-year-old victim. A drug deal gone wrong, best as we can figure, which ain’t much.” He got a heavy look in his eye. Didn’t offer up more than that, though Tom guessed there was more to tell. Something he thought might set Tom off, maybe. A young grieving family left behind, perhaps.

“Think I can hold myself together for the rest of the day, at least.”

“You look like shit,” Tom said, too worried for tact. “You sure you don’t want to sleep longer? There ain’t anyone else can take these statements?”

Detective West snorted. “We were swamped even before this boy got his brain blown out on the side of the road, so, no.”

“Sorry,” Tom said. “I just don’t like to see you headed back out looking beat to hell.”

He turned back, arching an eyebrow. “Can’t imagine how that feels.”

Tom froze, shame tugging at him. Detective West sighed, put his hand on Tom’s shoulder. “Look, I’m sorry. That was an asshole thing to say. I just got a few more leads to chase. No one else is going to do. Thanks for watching out for me last night.”

He watched Detective West drive away. Felt an ache in his chest as he left. Remembered a time five years ago, shoving a shred of paper in his wallet and driving away, catching a glimpse of Roland through the rear view mirror. Hoping, praying, in that moment, that he’d never lay eyes on West Finger again.

In the here-and-now, Tom turned and gazed at the little trailer, the one he’d been so proud of when he bought it, how clean and cozy and full of light it was. He was at loose ends with himself on his days off from the garage. Usually he picked up extra shifts just to avoid thinking, but here he was, doing nothing, feeling more at loose ends than ever as he went through his empty place, picking up the coffee mugs and plates from breakfast, wandering into his bedroom to strip the sheets off the bed, the emptiness of the place suddenly loud and hard to bear.

\---

Tom didn’t hear from Detective West after that, and picked up as many shifts at work as he could. He worked through a couple of weeks, stayed mostly sober, kept away from bar fights. Saw in the papers that the state police had solved a murder case, and read it closely. There on the third page was an interview with Detective Roland West, commenting on the matter. Thought about calling him to congratulate him, but decided not to. Tom hadn’t ever just called him out of the blue, not without needing some kind of help, and he wasn’t sure they had that kind of relationship. Where they called each other like friends.

The loneliness always deepened, leading into November, when the trees hung mostly bare and the rains picked up and took on a cooler bite. It worst time of the year for him, when everything reminded him of Will and Julie. When his nightmares picked up and everything seemed to remind him of that November five years ago. He didn’t know why he’d ever thought he could manage back in West Finger, seeing those same trees turn and those same lonely paths slick with rain. Everything seemed haunted, this time of year.

This Saturday was his day off and had slept most of the day. He laid in bed, thinking about going out, but knew how it was likely to end, so instead he was lying in bed, feeling he should get up but having no clear idea what for. It’d just gotten dark enough outside that he’d resolved to turn on lamp by his bed when he heard a knock at the door.

He got up, puzzled. Neighbors could be boisterous, but they all left him alone. He had half-way buttoned up his shirt when he got to the door and opened it, still rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

He came face-to-face with two ghosts on his front stoop. Still, white, and silent. He stared at them for a moment, a dull kind of incomprehension washing over him. Classic sheet-over-the-head ghosts, with dark felt circles where the eyes should be. He briefly wondered if someone was playing a sick joke on him.

“Um, trick or treat.” A teenage boy’s muffled voice. A shift of the bed sheets, and a paper grocery bag shaking in his face. He blinked. Halloween. Fuck. He’d somehow forgotten it was Halloween.

He stared at the kids for a long time. “Think you’re too old to be trick or treating,” he said, voice rough.

“Come on, we got costumes.”

“I don’t have anything. Get lost.”

He closed the door behind him. Sat heavily on the couch, thinking about turning on the TV, but just blinking owlishly into the dark instead. A few minutes later, he heard a soft thump against his door, the faintest sound of something cracking. It was repeated a second later. He searched his brain, then knew the answer, buried in some teenage memory of his own--eggs breaking against his front door. A moment later he heard a whoop and holler. He had a momentary impulse to throw the door open, to see how tough they were in a real fight, but there was no real fight in him tonight. They were just kids, and something about being this close to November sucked all the fight out of him.

Halloween had always been hard, but this was the first time he’d been back, in a neighborhood, with kids, since that last Halloween. The things the police had suggested, that that sick bastard had been in contact with them even then—

They’d begged him to let them go by themselves, and Tom had agreed. He might not have, with different kids, but he knew he could count on Will and Julie to stick together. He’d sat at home handing out candy instead, alone. The memories of that night—not knowing it was the last time, just feeling, with a bittersweet tug, that his kids were growing up, growing away from him—

He turned on the TV. Under the buzz of game show patter, he heard the sound of young feet walking up his steps, excited chatter dying down as someone knocked. Softly and tentatively (the way Julie used to knock, before looking back doubtfully at him on the sidewalk, how he always had to tell her to try again, harder.)

He sank into his seat, tried to turn the TV up to drown it out.

He probably drowned out most of them with the TV, but he couldn’t entirely escape the occasional rattle through the walls when an adult or an older kid knocked on the door, or the flashlight glare that sliced through the blinds as groups surveyed his place, debating whether it was worth knocking. Christ, his lights were out, how much more clear could he be?

He wondered how many of the kids out there had been trick-or-treating _that_ Halloween, kids who’d been luckier than his kids. Why them? It was a hateful thing to think, wondering why it’d happened to his kids, like it should have happened to someone else. But in his lowest moments, he wondered. Why his kids?

He was staring into the TV, watching some football game when another knock came at the door. A heavy, insistent, adult knock. He shouted over his shoulder, “The lights are off for a fucking reason. Take a goddamn hint.”

“Tom? I ain’t looking for candy.”

He startled, and scrambled to the door. He pulled the door open, and there was Detective West, leaning against the doorframe. “Thought I’d see how you were doing.” He looked around the street. “Guess I picked a busy night.”

“Yeah. Picked a real epicenter of Halloween activity.”

“One of the reasons I live in an apartment. The courtyard keeps them out.” He was looking at Tom, and looking at the cracked remains of eggs running down the wall beside the door. “Teens can be real fucking assholes on Halloween.”

He stared at Roland. He guessed he knew as well as anyone how close they were to the anniversary. How hard holidays in particular were. Especially one full of kids running through the streets, so many of them looking from a distance like they could have been Will or Julie. He nodded. “That why you’re here?”

Detective West shrugged. Tom peered at him suspiciously. He’d heard enough around town, from breathlessly concerned folks at church, about the devil shit young people got up to on Halloween lately. How they tended to gravitate to sites of murders, tragedies. Like that wasn’t shit every generation had got up to, visiting and vandalizing haunted places, to prove that shit wasn’t ever going to affect them. The shit he’d heard about the things teenagers got up to in Devil’s Den and the house on Shoepick Lane on Halloween night. If Detective West thought Tom had been out tonight, picking fights with devil-worshipping teens over the sanctity of that house Tom hadn’t set foot in in five years—

“Just thinking of you. Wanted to check on you.”

Tom relaxed. Hell, wasn’t it the truth that the night was fucking with his head right now?

“I saw you closed that case.”

“Good to have it behind me. You want to get out of here for the night? Go someplace quieter?”

Tom looked around, nodded. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

At Detective West’s place, they sat on the couch together. On the TV, some black and white monster movie about 50s nuclear anxiety was playing with the sound turned off. He’d put his coffee mug down next to Detective West’s and was talking in a low voice. It was the first time, in all the times, that he really talked about himself, his life before. But it all came spilling out tonight. About buying the house. Quitting school at sixteen. Halloweens past. The first time he’d taken both of them, Julie just five months old in his arms, and Will, almost three, clutching his hand. He’d always liked it, just him and the kids together, how much fun they had.

He trailed off, realized Detective West was staring at him with a deep furrow in his brow.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just, think it sounds like you were a good parent, is all. You’re better at taking care than you think, Tom.”

He leaned back, his knee bumping up against Tom’s casually. Tom looked at him, swallowed. That sense of longing reawakening, as he watched Detective West’s calm, wry smile over his face. He cursed himself, but it’d been too long since he’d touched anyway. The touch sent a wave of longing through him, waking up desires that he thought he’d laid to rest.

Tom swallowed, and the two of them watched the military get called in to face off against the giant mutant, troops swarming out across the screen in silence. Detective West slumped down, slightly, his shoulder leaning up against Tom’s. He stole a glance at Detective West, and Detective West was looking at him evenly.

“Those kids knew how to take care of each other,” Tom whispered, like he hadn’t heard Detective West, like the words weren’t echoing around in his head, like a bell going off. "They hardly even fought. When I was a kid, you couldn’t trust me to look after anyone else. I was off in my own world. But not them.”

He stared at the TV. “Those kids did a better job of looking out for each other than we did looking out for them. How the hell you think they even knew to get along, when all they had was…?” He drifted off. The thought seemed to linger in the air, the way it lingered in his mind, no period on it, just the same cycle over and over.

“You looked out for them. That’s how they knew.”

Tom blinked, shrugged. Felt like he was on the verge of breaking down into tears. He barely noticed as his head sank to rest on Detective West’s shoulder, though he did notice when Detective West’s arm came to curl around his shoulder, the weight and warmth of him sending an unhelpful surge of longing through his legs.

Tom stayed still, almost too still to breath, as another movie started. _King Kong_. Tom sighed. Kept his head in its spot on Detective West’s shoulder. Not really wanting to lift it, for fear that Detective West would realize he’d made some kind of mistake in letting him lay it there.

They began talking again. Talking about easier things. First movies they’d gone to as kids, monster movies that had scared them. Tom learned that Roland West hadn’t seen a movie until he was eight years old. Not many chances to visit the theater out on the ranch.

He wondered briefly, what this was. Whatever they were doing. Just knew that he didn’t want it to stop. Didn’t want to move a muscle to disturb whatever they had here between them.

“It’s all right, you know,” Detective West murmured softly in his ear.

Tom sucked in a breath. His hand went up to grasp Detective West’s wrist, hold it tight, while Detective West let him. Tom rubbed his thumb on the inside of his wrist, slowly. So faintly it might have almost passed for plausible deniability. Waiting for Detective West to freeze in discomfort, or extricate himself from their tangle on the couch, or raise his voice.

He just sat there watching the film play out as a silent movie, the inside of his wrist soft and relaxed under Tom’s thumb, his arm sturdy around Tom’s shoulder.

Tom’s heart pounded in his chest for minutes.

“Never really saw what the appeal in Fay Wray was,” Detective West murmured. “She had a set of pipes on her, I’ll give her that, but I don’t know….”

Tom tightened his grasp around his wrist, and lifted his head, watched his chin turn through his eyelashes, feeling the last of the booze leave him as Detective West turned to him, studying him, like he was still trying to make sense of him.

His expression softened, and he moved his free hand up to Tom’s face, brushed a curl aside, behind his ear, Tom’s breath catching in his throat as the fingers brushed behind his ear.

Tom nodded. He straightened up, feeling their bodies pressed firm against each other, Detective West staring openly at Tom’s lips. Tom leaned forward and kissed him. It was a clumsy, desperate thing, largely devoid of experience or skill. The few times he’d dared in some encounter at a bar or in a corner of a park, he’d been shoved roughly away from the other man’s face. Detective West didn’t push him away. Didn’t freeze either, as Tom suspected he himself would have if a man had ever kissed him.

His thumb came down to stroke Tom’s jaw. He felt his thumb brush lightly over his stubble. He was breathing hard. Halfway to choking. Tom felt his hands on the other man’s belt, trying to not fumble like an over-eager teenager, even if he felt like one.

His hands slipped to the shirt that was tucked neatly in Detective West’s jeans, and he tugged it loose, fingers brushing his warm stomach underneath. Hands were in his hair, and they were pulling him into another kiss.

His hand slid under his undershirt. Detective West—Roland, goddammit—was looking down at him, that same even gaze, tilting Tom’s head up and back to meet his eyes. He was trying to get his belt loose, the lips on his neck making him ticklish.

The strangeness of it—halfway to laughing from ticklishness, seeing what he was doing—was enough to mystify him. It was enough to make him smile as he was pushed down onto the couch. The two of them pressed together, working clothes off—each other’s, when they could manage it, their own when they got impatient, Tom dragging his socks off while Roland lifted his hips to work his jeans off. Tom hadn’t been naked with a man before. Hadn’t done anything but shoved some clothes aside, the sound of flies unzipping and belt buckles clicking in the night air.

They were down to their underwear, pressed up side by side on the couch, the upholstery scratchy under his side. Roland’s hand was grazing down Tom’s chest and the trail of hair down his stomach, before he slipped his fingers into the hem of his boxers.

The fear of being pushed away was baked into every touch he’d ever shared, and something of it must have shown on his face, because Roland said, again, “It’s all right.”

Tom nodded, trying to believe that—decided he would—as he lifted his hips as his underwear was dragged down around his thighs. He didn’t much like to be teased—never had, not that he’d had too many chances to experience it—but there was something about Roland’s patience as he moved—deliberate and slow, that fascinated, held him in place. He closed his eyes tight, as he felt shifting over him, Roland slowly easing himself further down the couch, straddling Tom’s ankles.

“Christ,” Tom choked, as Roland’s hand slipped down to his cock, amiably cupping him and sliding up the length, a shade too lazy, although that didn’t stop Tom’s hips from bucking into it, embarrassingly eager. He whimpered as he felt Roland lean down, rubbing circles with his thumb in the sensitive hollow of his hip as he brought his head down. Tom’s eyes widened, staring, unable to look away as Roland’s mouth closed around him.

“Hell, Roland.”

He tried to explain that he’d never—no man had—but he couldn’t form complete sentences just then.

He got used to saying Roland’s first name as he closed his eyes, feeling Roland’s mouth around him, Roland’s tongue on him, moving lazily and unhurried, like he was enjoying himself, his fingers massaging his hips. Tom wondered, briefly, at what kind of life this man had lived, that he could be so easy with himself, so easy with affection, like no one had ever told him what they were doing was wrong.

Roland slid his tongue over the slit of his cock, tasting whatever was there, and Tom sighed, brushing through Roland’s hair, leaving it messed and standing up in places. Roland caught his gaze and held it as he bobbed, and Tom let out some kind of helpless animal noise before he could stop himself.

He’d never had trouble finishing in silence before—but this time he came with a grunt and a whimper, like silence would have been impossible even if it’d been necessary.

They lay together for a moment, still. Sweat cooling on Tom’s stomach. Tom felt himself push his elbows under him and slide off the couch, kneeling on the floor in front of Roland.

“You don’t need to—” Roland began.

“I want to,” he said, the urgency in voice clipped as he put his head down, taking Roland in his mouth. He mouthed him slowly, savored the taste, the soft sounds Roland made. Roland took his time, didn’t thrust down his throat. Brushed his hair back and looked at him. Being seen, being gazed at, flushed him up. It wasn’t the sort of thing he thought he ever would have liked, but Roland…. Shit.

He lowered his eyes again. He bobbed his head, set a rhythm. Eventually Roland’s breathing grew ragged, and his fingers tightened and stilled in his hair. Tom didn’t feel the immediate urge to pull away after he was done, but then Roland’s hands were pulling him up and onto the couch with him, where they just barely fit side by side. Roland tugged a blanket down from the back of the couch, threw it over them.

The credits were rolling on the film in front of them, after that the channel faded out into static.

“Jesus,” said Tom. Struggling to find other words to say, and coming up short.

When they at last got up to drift toward bed, their hands were clasped together. Tom raked his eyes over Roland’s body as he followed him. Roland was comfortable with his own nakedness in a way Tom didn’t think he’d ever manage, but he bore it, walking through his own house. They slipped into bed together, Roland on the side he’d slept in the last time he’d been here, when he’d been so sick. When he’d reminded Tom that he might still have something to offer. Tom blushed, remembering how much that had meant to him, just to do something good for someone else. To feel like something other than a fuck-up.

In the room, they could feel that early November chill settling in, a relentless reminder of the gray, bleak days sure to come. The memories they carried with them. Under the covers, they slid closer together, Roland’s front pressing up against his back, pressing them together. In that moment, he felt like he just might be able to face down the days to come.


End file.
